How To Promote Your Next Big Show

The Internet has brought musicians such a variety of ways to promote their music. You can have a Facebook page, a Myspace page, a Twitter page, a Reverbnation page, and about a hundred others. (If you don't have those four, you need to.) Countless bands have used this to their advantage to get new fans from across the country at a very early stage in their musical careers.

However, the Internet has made us all incredibly lazy. Most artists have gotten too used to the convenience offered and not taken advantage of the real promotional benefit. There is more to promotion than tweeting about your show, inviting your friends to a Facebook event, and posting the show on your website.

Remember this while you plan your marketing: you don't want to only tell people that there is a show, you want to tell them why they should come. Is there a CD release? A big giveaway? A killer live show? You can always think of something exciting to draw people in.

That being said, here are some things everyone should do to promote every show:

1. Print flyers and hand them out at big shows in town. This used to be a common occurence, but nobody does it anymore. That means that when a showgoer gets a flyer put in their hand now, they actually read it. Use this to your advantage.

2. Make a flyer for web use and make sure it gets everywhere. All your websites, event pages, personal pages, everywhere it can be seen. Ask friends and your top fans to do the same.

3. Sell tickets in advance. No easier way to make sure people come to your show than to sell them a ticket early. It also forces everyone to do some promotion that may have been otherwise put off for other tasks.

4. Make a Facebook event. Note that this is one of several things to do, not the ONLY thing to do. Make sure every band member invites all of their friends, as well as the other bands. If one event is used for the entire show rather than one event per band/artist, the results are MUCH better. Write up a nice description.

5. Contact your local newspapers and radio stations. Almost all of them have a local music section and will be glad to list your show and sometimes read about it on-air. You just have to tell them about it.

6. Personally invite your repeat fans. If you have some people who come to all of your shows or love your music, send them a personal invite. Talk to them and they'll appreciate it! You can also invite them to bring some new friends to the show, and more often than not, they will.

7. Print out 11x17 posters for the show and make sure they're hanging at the following locations: a) the venue b)any coffee shop near the venue c) any music store near the venue d) any record store near the venue) and e) any hot topic in your city. All of these places are glad to post your poster or place some flyers on the counter. It makes them look involved in the community, so let them help.

8.Don't do all the work yourselves! Get friends, fans, and most importantly, the other bands to do promotion for the show too. It makes everyone's load a little lighter and more people will find out.

You never want to hear the following quote from anyone:

"Oh, you guys played last weekend? I wish I had known, I would have gone!"

Promote hard and promote smart, and everyone will know.



Bravo Nine Media is a music distribution and marketing firm based in Raleigh, NC. The company was founded in 2010 with the goal of making promotion, sales, and inventory easier for independent artists, bands, and musicians.

Read more at b9media.blogspot.com or at www.bravoninemedia.com.